Imagine being sterilized against your will by the state. Human rights groups say that’s exactly what happened to more than 2,000 women in Peru under the government of President Alberto Fujimori. They say the government launched the campaign to reduce poverty by lowering the birth rate. The actual number of forced sterilizations could be much higher.
We wanted to learn more about the alleged victims of this program and how it was carried out. So we called on Alejandra Cardenas, legal adviser for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York. You can watch Fionnuala Sweeney’s interview above.